Image Credit: Jojo Whilden; Everett Collection; Everett Collection
Raise your hands if you’d like to see a sequel to The Fighter. When Mark Wahlberg, during an interview with EW’s Jeff Labrecque, announced that he was interested in making one, my first reaction, I’ll be honest, was fairly cynical, with a touch of knee-jerk mockery. The Fighter, a movie I thought was flat-out terrific, brought Wahlberg, as both actor and behind-the-scenes producer-packager, what is probably his greatest blast of triumph since he made his first big splash on the movie scene back in 1997 with Boogie Nights. By all means, I thought, he should build on that success, exploit that new heat. But a sequel to The Fighter? It seemed like an overly cautious move, a case of feeding too much off the acclaim he’d already gotten, of going back to a well that didn’t need to be revisited. It sounded on some level like the prestige version of Rocky syndrome: milking a character who audiences fell for — and, in the process, inviting their connection to that character to be a little less pure and vivid. READ FULL STORY »
